I'm not a tab-tab developer

I disabled autocompletion in my GitHub Copilot Xcode extension and returned to Xcode plain autocompletion with disabled predictive code completion.

It's a blast.

I'm not sure if it's a lack of Swift support in those tools or just me (yes, I tried all LLMs). In my case, suggestions were mostly semantically correct but syntactically wrong. Wrong API calls, wrong class or variable names.

Manually fixing those errors is not an improvement to me as a programmer.

I also realized that those suggestions got in my flow of coding. It's like having two programmers constantly fighting to write their own ideas into the same code file simultaneously. Imagine that with a real pair-programmer.

And that's the point. Using AI during programming like a real pair-programmer I can talk to, discuss, and argue with is a game changer. It often prevents me from overthinking and overengineering.

But like with real pair-programmers, it's not about both writing code. It's about talking and ideas.

I don't want to tell someone else all the time what to write. I want to write myself. That's what I enjoy: the writing part, the creative process.

It's also about learning. It's different to see some code or to read someone else's code. That is highly valuable in the beginning, but at some point, you have to dip your own toe into the water and start coding. Writing down your own ideas and turning them into functional code.

So now during coding, I have my Copilot chat open and connected to Xcode so it sees the code, and we can discuss.

I like to be challenged by other programmers, and being a solo, AI can fill that part, making me actually more productive.